The Official Gift Guide for hotel marketers

This wish list is unlike any other.
Don’t expect to be asked for the latest tech gadget or an all-expenses paid vacation.

Listen up, hotel owners and asset managers.

Want to sleigh the holidays this year for your hotel marketing team?

No holiday is complete without our annual Official Gift Guide for Hotel Marketers to keep the season bright.

Just one heads up: This wish list is unlike any other.Don’t expect to be asked for the latest tech gadget or an all-expenses-paid vacation.

What hotel marketers really want are the necessary assets, funds, and tools to reach their 2019 goals.

So, pass the festive cocktails.
Bring on the cheer.

Here’s what hotel marketers REALLY want this year:

1. They want a budget correlated to revenue goals

Let’s be realistic.

If you’re holding your marketing team accountable to loftier revenue goals, you’ll need to support that with a loftier budget. Unfortunately, there are still many hotel owners who believe marketers are miracle workers who can achieve more revenue with less resources, less tools, less staff, and less funds.

The sales team isn’t the only department accountable to revenue goals anymore.

Hotel owners and asset managers are now expecting hotel marketers to contribute to the bottom line in a tangible way, beyond pretty pictures, Instagram posts and squishy “branding projects.” In return, hotel marketing teams are beginning to track direct ROI, such as marketing cost per booking (MCPB), return on ad spend (ROAS) and direct website conversions.

To outperform your compset, you need an army of top talent at every level of your marketing department. After all, someone is behind every digital touchpoint – from social media, to the hotel website design, to email. Not to mention all the expertise needed behind-the-scenes, such as search marketing, data analytics, and CRM systems. While talented digital marketing professionals are aplenty all over the country, they are being reeled in by other industries that offer higher pay and better benefits and perks (think Google, Facebook, and virtually any major corporation with a website).

The first step to building an unbeatable team is recruiting employees who have both digital prowess and hotel marketing instincts. This means hiring staff who understand the hotel experience. Rethinking your compensation packages. And, making sure they understand the stages of the travel purchase funnel, ROI of each, and how to usher a visitor onto the next phase.

Every week, a hotel is announcing a stunning redesign or renovation, or breaking ground on a new property entirely. With so much shiny and new inventory on the market, it’s getting near impossible to compete with an aging, tired product. No amount of innovative and brilliant marketing (and trust us, your marketing team is trying) can mask a shoddy hotel experience.

The solution IS NOT leaning more on your marketing team.

It’s to invest in the necessary property upgrades to remain competitive. Travelers are more sophisticated and vocal than ever. It’s vital to keep up with modern amenities, aesthetics, and experiences. Without improving your hotel product, trying to win over the hearts and wallets of guests simply with more marketing will be a never-ending battle.

Think deep insight into your guests’ behavior and preferences – past, present and future. Knowing which customers have the highest lifetime value and how to reach them. Aptly leveraging peaks and dips in your hotel’s business cycle to reap the best possible net profit.

Not to mention, the responsibility to protect your guests and their personal data. The hospitality industry has been a target of security breaches since 2010. No hotel is immune and the effects on customers’ security have been far-reaching. From independent properties to Marriott to Sabre Hospitality Solutions’ reservation system, hackers have been able to collect secure customer data, including credit card numbers, addresses, names, login credentials, dates of birth and passport information.

Collecting, managing, analyzing, and protecting all this data can be exciting but also overwhelming. Hotel marketers need the tools and the funds to pull this off.

6. They want better benchmarking

Almost every hotel marketer we have spoken to has the same question: “How am I performing compared to similar properties?”

The key is thorough vetting to find the content creators who are worth the investment and who will produce actual deliverables beyond a few selfie Instagram posts. The more worthwhile influencers produce additional content on the hotel’s behalf that you can use for future marketing campaigns. Some even assist with the hotel’s social media efforts ongoing. Either way, standardize the process by requiring an application covering demographics, engagement, following and a minimum amount of deliverables. This will make it easier to discern which influencers are worth a partnership.

8. They want continued investments in direct booking campaigns

What started as a big-bang movement by Marriott and Hilton with campaigns like “Stop Clicking Around,” has now filtered down to hotel collections and individual properties of all sizes, locations, and brand affiliations. Battling massively funded OTAs not only takes time and gumption, but a steadfast investment and long-term outlook in getting the message across about direct booking.

There are plenty of good reasons for your guests to skip the OTAs and to book direct.

For them, it’s no longer just about what’s inside the confines of your property. They’re looking beyond the hotel walls for remarkable experiences they can’t achieve at home. So, for the past several years, hotels have answered the call by redefining their guest experience… and attempting to become the epicenter of their destination.

From chef-led farmers market tours to lobby art shows featuring local upcoming artists, hoteliers are hoping their curated local experiences will prove to drive more bookings and boost their bottom line.

Sometimes you feel as if your hotel can’t survive without OTAs.
They bring bookings seemingly out of nowhere and consistently fill your rooms with a minimal amount of effort. However, the fact remains that those rooms are booked at rock-bottom prices. On top of that, OTAs still pocket 15-30% on top of the already reduced room rate.

About Tambourine

Tambourine uses technology and creativity to increase revenue for hotels and destinations worldwide. The firm, now in its 34th year, is located in New York City, Carlsbad, and Fort Lauderdale.Please visit: www.Tambourine.com

“I believe that what Tambourine offers is the future of the agency business and that they have a unique understanding of what hotels need in today's market. Tambourine will make an immediate impact on your business.”

“After an extensive global search amongst the leading hotel marketing firms, we are confident to have selected Tambourine as our marketing partner... Their unique combination of advanced ecommerce capabilities, paired with a strong understanding of high-end luxury branding, have made them a perfect fit for our needs.”

“Tambourine is one of the most innovative companies in the digital marketing space... their adaptive capabilities to emerging technology has separated them from their competition and has proved to us why they are an instrumental resource to long-term success.”

“Before Tambourine came on board, we had three separate vendors which affected our ability to get to market quickly and drive the bottom line. In my 20 years of hospitality experience, I have never seen a firm that brings creative, hotel knowledge and technology together like Tambourine.”